Driving Ban Needed for Cell Phone Use

Sure, you've heard the whimpering about the use of cell phones while driving.  Dangerous!  Texting?  Good God, air bags all around!  Ho hum.

Hey Mothers Against Cell Drivers!  Forget it!  The real culprit is just plain old driving.

Yep.  Driving.

Science News warns of this very real danger.  A psychologist named Gary Dell (no relation to the guy who used to make really good computers) reports that driving while using a cell phone significantly degrades cell phone performance.  Well, the cell phone does okay, but the driver really sucks at using the cell phone.

The study studied old and young drivers relaying information from the cell phone to a passenger.  The control was established by these same drivers when not driving.  They heard stories on their cell phones, like a Garrison Keillor podcast, except in Urbana, Illinois, and had to repeat those same stories to the passenger, who was still a passenger but in a car parked at, say, a Burger King.  The repeating went pretty well under the control conditions.  You know, Angelina Jolie goes to Haiti to visit traumatized children for the UN.  Sitting in one place, that's pretty much how the cell phone's story got to the passenger, except the UN was called "the frakkin' UN."

When the car was negotiating Urbana streets at a steady 30 miles an hour, the same driver heard the cell phone story and told the passenger that Angelina Jolie had divorced Brad Pitt and filmed a movie in Port au Prince, moved into a splendid Cirque tent with Sean Penn and adopted 10,000 orphaned Haitian children.  Bradgelina's lawyers stopped the car at the very next traffic light.

The driver also went completely insane keeping his BMW at 30 mph, but that was not part of the study.

By the way, it is not just cell phone ability that is compromised.  Storytelling, itself suffered.  Drivers repeated fewer story elements than passengers in the moving Toyota test.  Passengers pretty much got all the needed story elements out, while drivers could remember only the story elements of, maybe, an NBC 10 o'clock drama.

Summing up, Gary Dell said that driving is just plain dangerous for raconteurs (Garrison Keillor, again), bank executives and everyone at FOX Views.  He recommended that anyone planning a whopper (not from that Burger King) should sit the hell still.

Gary Dell further said that age didn't matter, but moving did.  Sorry, Gare, but I can guarantee that age affects moving big time.  Better recalibrate the knee part of your test.

Stop With the Scouting Trip Stuff!

Angelina Jolie was in Haiti last Wednesday.  Not everyone hid their children under rubble.

Gelina was there without her better-name-half, reportedly checking out the adoptee pool. She was in the Dominican Republic part of the island the day before, but those kids all have good jobs in T-shirt factories.

Besides, her visit was official.  Gelina is an ambassador of goodwill for the UN, Americans having a such surfeit of that for the UN.  She had to visit a quota of medical facilities, housed in smaller-than-Cirque tents, as part of her mission.  She went to villages that care for newly orphaned Haitians youngsters, many seriously hurt in God's Pat-Robertson-Approved Retribution (but we've covered that).

One boy, who had lost a leg, laughed out loud about some goofy book he was reading.  At least, Gelina thought it was, but she hadn't read Sarah Palin's work before.

Many of you may mock Gelina's jaunts around the world adopting locals.  But I don't care what her reasons are.  She goes where most of us won't even catch on the Discovery Third World Channel.  She is a big star, played Lara Croft twice and could simply do her nails in Hollywood if she and her party-of-the-first-part-name could stand the place full time.  Now that you mention it, she is perfect for my latest screenplay, too.

Unlike Americans, most folks in the underdeveloped world did not see "Changling" and don't worry she'll lose or even take their children.  She is also beautiful with a smile any kid would remember well beyond next week's dinner.

Does anybody accuse Bill Gates of using his Foundation's good work to get Africa addicted to Windows Mobile OS?  Well, all right, but that was before.

So lay off Gelina.  She, that smile and her heart at least end up in the right places.  So, last Wednesday?  I was here in Naples, pretty damned close to Haiti.  Where were you?

What snow?

Fiction Purveyor Unfairly Sued by Bradgelina

The News of the World, the major British tabloid, is being sued by Bradgelina.  It printed a story claiming that the photogenic superduperstar twosome were (this being in England) headed for two onesomes and were dividing up their very charming moniker, very handsome bank accounts and very international children.

Every important and respected media outlet in the United States and People Magazine immediately reported on the report, the fact of the report itself being worthy of reporting.

You would think that Brad and Angelina, who kicked each other's butts in "Mr. and Mrs. Smith", would be getting in some stretches in preparation of a rebuttal, but they have kids now.  Instead, their representatives stated emphatically that the story of the impending breakup was not, is not, all that accurate.  They asked for an apology and, maybe a few hundred million pounds (which are more than dollars any day). 

Did News of the World do the right thing?  Ha!

Now, Bradgelina's Brit lawyers are doing the pleading.  On parchment.  With wigs.

I'm sorry, but, in my view, Brad and Angelina are being daft nits.  The News of the World is owned by Rupert Murdock, for God's sake.  The same guy who owns FOX News and almost every tabloid that ever printed a photo of a martian baby with a tattoo that looked like Jesus Christ.

Surely, a couple so super that they only need one name can have only one opinion about this.

It's Murdock.  It's fiction.  Option the rights.

(Uh.  Did I mention I do screenplays, too?)